The Holly & The Ivy: Part IV

Pigs have always been welcome guests in the Herbfarm’s pretty kitchen gardens. Guests know the amiable resident potbellies by name — Basil and Borage – and feed them table scraps.

The newest hogs on the farm, though, go without names. They arrived as piglets from the only U.S. importer of Austrian Mangalitsas, prized for their rich fat and deep flavor. They’ve been fed on acorns for 90 days and on hazelnuts for two months before that, a Northwest riff on the famed Jamon Iberico hams.

The first Herbfarm Mangalitsas will be slaughtered in January and eaten snout to tail, not just cherry-picked for chops and bacon, but used for every delicacy from lardo to blood sausage.

“Sorry guys, sorry,” chef Keith Luce said sheepishly to the curly-haired animals as he described their fate.

“We can’t wait to cure them.”

The pigs are just one way Luce has made his stamp on the Herbfarm since coming in as “the new guy” last year, replacing renowned chef Jerry Traunfeld. In time, he hopes the pigs will be joined by sheep, providing a steady supply of milk for the cheeses the restaurant now makes. If the economy should miraculously heat up, he dreams of dairy cows.

Now, in the latest in what he calls his “harebrained schemes,” Luce is plotting to plant a variety of hardwood oak trees on the farm that can be innoculated with truffles. He could use the acorns to feed future pigs, and harvest Herbfarm truffles from the trees.

“We just have out own little ecosystem here,” he said. His ultimate goal, “no matter how long I’m here, or however long I live, or whichever comes first,” is to operate like a European agriturismo, where guests are fed almost wholly from the farm.

In summertime even now, 95 percent of their produce is grown on the rented land, as well as extras like “wood” for the oven made from the dried stems of woody herbs, and honey from the Herbfarm bees.

Luce is visiting the acreage at the nearby South 47 Farm, as he usually does, on his Wednesday “prep day.” It’s a hive-busy day in the kitchen, when the restaurant is typically closed for meals and the staff does all the advance work they can manage for the nights ahead.

In summer’s ripening rush, he might come three times as often, changing his menu last minute if ingredients are past their prime, and looking for new inspiration.

When Luce joined the Herbfarm last year, he looked at how Traunfeld interpreted the themed menus that are the restaurant’s hallmark – a “Dinner for a Copper King” in salmon season, or “Menu for an Autumn Sketchbook” in the fall. He didn’t want to come in “guns blazing” and push through a different vision.

But looking back, he finally realized, was stifling. He didn’t feel his own meals were coming “from a pure place,” or challenging the staff.

“I felt like I was the one who had been here for 17 years.”

Now, he starts planning about a week in advance with a clean slate and a quiet place, brainstorming flavors to match owner Ron Zimmerman’s themes.

Always, “it starts at the farm, using the things we produce.”

On this “Holly & The Ivy” week, for the most festive menu of the year, he has known for weeks that he will need to use a lot of kale.

The humble leafy green is the item people would probably least associate with a three-figure holiday dinner; they might point instead to the Wagyu beef or sturgeon caviar or even the dainty dessert scented with English thyme. But the kale is plentiful, and Luce doesn’t want to waste what he grows.

He has assigned it a supporting role in his Northwest-style Bollito Misto, joining Washington lentils, pork belly, chicken, and a house-made Cotechino, an Italian sausage.

On one hand the sausage is a celebratory Christmas delicacy that Luce’s own grandfather used to make. It adds to The Holly & The Ivy’s seasonal synchronicity, even though it doesn’t come from a garden or tree.

On the other hand, the ingredients include pig skin and fat, ingredients that others might discard, luxury through thrift.

For future inspiration, Luce is impressed by how the farm’s fava bean plants are growing strong and “gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.” He will ask the staff gardeners if he can use the tips and leaves in sautés without stunting the spring crop.

The restaurant hopes to nearly double its rented acreage at the farm, and Luce has already brought in plums and other fruit trees, plus side experiments like a black soybean and an heirloom purple bean. His staff is creating spreadsheets of plantings and harvest times, cheering items as fundamental as this year’s “breakthrough in potatoes,” where the soil was aerated and conditioned with leaf mold.

“Root vegetables had been an issue” at the farm, he said. He found them scaly and odd-textured his first year, he said, now he’s content with gorgeous Adirondack Blues and Ozettes.

The former farm boy has, though, given up on growing Herbfarm beets. He would find one beet from the harvest was bitter and the next one sweet, he said, causing a cooking logjam where they stopped to taste each one. Now the beets come from Oxbow Farm east in Duvall — the type of local supplier, he said, the restaurant also wants to support.

It’s not quince season in the Northwest. The final fruits are long gone from the Herbfarm’s trees, but Luce will still capture the traditional Yuletime flavor for a final hint of Christmas. His extra harvest was preserved as puree and will be used for a “Holly & The Ivy” sorbet.

Back at the restaurant, Anna Harlow-Truscott, who makes up the pastry team along with Lindy Peterson, is testing the puree with a refractometer to judge its sweetness.

Its sugars are so high, she and Luce agree, they actually need to be cut with water and lemon.

By that time, it’s 2 p.m., and “time to get serious,” Luce said. Jonathan Julia, his “right hand” in the kitchen, is making Cotechino. Chris Webber, his “left hand,” is cutting up squash in a precise dice.

In its final form, the Hubbard squash will take three forms: Roasted, candied, and cut into “fries,” each version paired with a different selection of beef.

Claire Schneyman has turned out rows of the “brik” pastries she and Luce had brainstormed earlier in the day. He views them with approval, asking almost rhetorically, “They’re good? They’re all perfect? Now that you’ve got the gist of it, it’s not going to be as hard as you thought?”

Then, the last-minute switches: The oysters Luce had planned to serve a small party renting the restaurant that night have been delayed, he replaces them with a little rectangular “sandwich” of toasted brioche and steelhead salmon. In what he considers the most embarassing prep day slip, he needs to make a vodka run to replace the low supplies so Renee Straus can finish formulating her “Pearls of the Salish Sea.” The veal he had planned on for the menu is not available; he will use chickens instead.

“The Holly & The Ivy” is almost set.

“I’ve made the decisions I need to make, and now I have to live with them.”